Somewhere
by NovaGirl
Summary: Naru, an aging recording, and a sleepless night. R&R.


Somewhere

My first BSSM fic I've ever thought I could post; inspired by watching what's possibly my favourite movie musical now. I do not own the song, nor the movie, nor Takeuchi-san's characters. R&R, and please, enjoy.  


~*~*~*~

Sometimes Naru could not sleep at night. Sometimes Umino could not soothe her with his tales of prune milkshakes, and sometimes Usagi did pick up the phone and the pit in her stomach was never big enough to drown in, despite how strong it felt. There had been a time for her and her pigtailed friend, and there would be another time. It was the same with her mother and her work. There were different times for everything.

When Naru could not sleep at night, sometimes it was because of her father. And when it was because of that, she stood up and opened her drawer and pulled out a greying photograph. Her father had been born in 1961, and the photo was from 1977, and he was smiling, a brightly smiling teenage boy with long shaggy auburn hair and a wide smile. Naru's hair would be his, if not for the constant ribbons keeping it safe, keeping it clean. She even had his smile now, when she wore one. It was heavy. Her mother had gotten rid of all the other photographs when he died. She understood that, and marveled at her mother's strength. 

And when the photograph wasn't enough to soothe her, then she got out a single, scratched, battered CD, not caring that mini-discs and Mp3s would be so much simpler, so much smoother on the ears. A love song turned lullaby was not supposed to be simple or smooth, and nor would its music be as such.   
  
_"There's a place for us...Somewhere, a place for us..."_ Naru's voice blended into it, the song less of a tune than a prayer, a desperate plea. Her father had sang this song to her when she wanted to go to sleep but she couldn't. Now Richard Beymer would have to do the trick. Natalie Wood had never sang, nor had Audrey Hepburn, but they shared a source of talent, someone whose face would never be adored but shrouded with the habit of a nun. Osaka Naru could not wait for when the duet truly began, no. She had to be beside him from the start, no matter the tears in her eyes.

She could not cry into her pillow on nights like these. She cried into a deep orange bandage with forest green--no, **jade** green stains that made her think of a half-ripe mandarin, not quite ready to be devoured just yet. There'd been a time for Nephlite and Sanjouin, both of them were the same and yet one name she could say out loud and the other she could not. She could not speak a lie, no matter how precious it had been.  
  
_"Somewhere we'll find a new way of living, we'll find a way of forgiving...somewhere."_

Once was never enough to truly listen to the words, rather than just hear them. But when she did let herself just hear, sometimes she saw, too. Saw a place of diamond, saw the scintillations spread over his features, his hair that looked just like her father's except so much darker, so much richer spread like wildfire over his uniform, standing equal to a prince. Naru knew that life was not like a comet, with the bearer moving forward and memory trailing behind--memory trailed both ways, and since not all of humanity could handle it, put their memories of the future in bottles. Intuition and hunches were most common. Naru kept her modesty in the bell jar that was her body--somewhere you kept the fragile things.

She was sure that she had killed Nephlite in the end. Or perhaps Shinigami merely was consistent in taking unruly-tressed men who loved her. She could not know. She had clung to him, but he had not even become a corpse to hold on to. That had reassured her; if there was no corpse, you could not say they were dead.

_"There's a place for us, a time and place for us..."_

She did not envy Usagi. Or at least, she did not envy her -too- much, not constantly. She did not envy all of her, just one small, precious thing. 

Whenever her older man left, he came back. And he never faded out. He just was gone. And she could know for sure what her love tasted of instead of Naru's hopeful, cherished guesses. Her bet was chocolate parfait.

_"Hold my hand and we're halfway there..."_

She would curl up in bed and listen to the song, liking the fuzziness of it, the warmth. It was something rich, and the voices felt young, felt strong, with everything to live for. It didn't matter in the song how opposed their sides were, the tears that could be heard in the blue-eyed Romeo's voice at the start, merely the fact that they faded, merely the fact that they could sing it together and kiss and cry all their woes away. And when she fell asleep with it on, it was that holy palace she dreamed of, where everything was solid and clear and ringing bright.

_"Hold my hand and I'll take you there..."_

And whenever she woke up on those mornings, she put an orange ribbon in her hair, never minding the moss-toned stains. Yumi and Kari would not mind, Umino would not mind, and Usagi's eyes would land on her and soften and they would speak lowly because they spoke of love.

Her eyelids flickered shut as she clung to the once saffron cotton.  
  
Somehow, someday, somewhere.

In death he would always be loved.  
  
~*~*~*~

Author's Notes:  
  
I don't remember the last time I wrote author's notes for something...but this fic is something I actually care about, mostly because I can't listen to the song without tears welling in my eyes. Nor can I watch the scene where Nephlite dies without tears welling...so my mind correlated the two. Marni Nixon did the voice for Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and for Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and I think she's a tragedy of cinema for never being acknowledged. Yumi and Kari are in there for the manga fans, who are the other two girls that Usagi associates with in Book 1. The writings of Terry Prachett have rubbed off on me too, so I'd like to credit the book Lords and Ladies from his Discworld series. Even if I recieve just one review, that means it would've been read. Thank you.


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